Mention of "humans" in Terra Nova.

In the season 1 episode Terra Nova, I'm a little confused as to how the descendants of the colonists came to think humans were a separate race. The explanation in the episode was something along the lines of the last thing they heard from their parents before they died was them arguing with humans over the communicator. How the hell did that conversation go? Did their parents really say something like "You gosh darn humans! You're killing us!" We even hear a snippet of their conversation and the word "human" was never mentioned as far as I recall. How does this make any sense?

In Archer's ready room, Sato and Mayweather play back the last transmission from Captain Mitchell of the Conestoga. It was intended for Earth, but due to the atmosphere it wasn't received. It turns out that, when the asteroid hit the planet, the colonists erroneously concluded that Earth was taking the colony back by force, prompted by the threats made by Mark Logan, opposition leader to more colonists. The ensuing radiation from the impact left only the children surviving, which led to three generations of hatred for off-worlders. With this insight, it becomes clear why the Novans are still suspicious, even when Phlox offers his help.​

there are some examples where groups of people have been cut off from their home, lost most of their adult population and basically made do with far less technology and a nearly complete loss of identity, but its rare.

this episode is really not good, which is a shame as it shows more about the very early post-First Contact period than anything else. Also, at the distances involved, it probably would have taken the Vulcans a few days to go check on the colony. It's almost hard to imagine that DIDN'T know what happened. Good friends, them Vulcans.

The thing I'm really confused about is why the Novans think these others are called "humans" of all things. A quote from http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Terra_Nova_(episode): "You Humans tried to gut our go-befores when they lived on the overside. Now you're trying to gut us!" How did this situation come about? Does the episode imply that they heard the word "human" for the first time from the Enterprise crew?

Quite possibly. It's not as if it would come up in ordinary discussion much, after all.

This is a society of Kaspar Hausers, raised in a planet-sized barrel. They have pretty odd ideas of how to live their lives, from the human point of view. Their language ought to reflect that, and in this case nicely does.

It all sort of flows effortlessly from that: the Prime Directive, the Vulcan Hello (now that was another revelation long in coming!), the Pervert Experimenting with Human'ish Kids (oh, the depths of it!)...

Now it's even possible we get a truly interesting description of the Romulan War. And a good idea of why the galaxy would think it wise to let humans run the show for a change.

I'm still pretty confused about this. Let me give an analogy to help illustrate my confusion.

Let's say New Zealand is hit by a meteor that kills everyone in the country above the age of six. Let's also say that the last thing these children hear from their parents is them talking over the phone about being attacked by another country, falsely believing that's what's happening. They don't say which country and they certainly don't refer to their attackers as "humans". New Zealand is now reduced to a primitive tribal society founded by these six-year-olds who believe people from another land killed their parents. Let's suppose that no one investigates what happened to New Zealand for seventy years for some reason. Now after seventy years, some people from Australia come to investigate and the first thing these New Zealanders say to them is "You humans gutted our go-befores!" or something to that effect. How would that make sense? That would mean those six-year-olds acquired the word "human" before their parents died, which is entirely plausible I suppose, but also associate the word specifically with people not from New Zealand. Is that not a fair analogy for what happened in the episode, or is there something I'm missing?

I'm still pretty confused about this. Let me give an analogy to help illustrate my confusion.

Let's say New Zealand is hit by a meteor that kills everyone in the country above the age of six. Let's also say that the last thing these children hear from their parents is them talking over the phone about being attacked by another country, falsely believing that's what's happening. They don't say which country and they certainly don't refer to their attackers as "humans".

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But the thing is, they might. After all, in the scenario, there are alternatives to be ruled out!

In the above scenario, it would not be impossible for the parents to heatedly (and mistakenly) exclaim that it was "the West" or "SEATO" or "USN" or whatever that nuked them, rather than a more expected (but still untrue) enemy like "Warsaw Pact" or "China" or whatnot. The kids would then think of "the West" as the identity and nature of the evil that stalks them, even when they factually are part of "the West".

In the Trek scenario, it's especially shocking to the parents that their fellow humans attacked them, when they would have expected such barbarism from naughty Nausicaans or vile Vulcans only. They do, after all, very well know that space is full of aliens even when they set out to this colonizing expedition. But they have already ruled out aliens and forces of nature as culprits, because circumstances so heavily suggest fellow humans instead. So "humans" gets shouted out a lot (but "fellow" less so)...